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FILM; Once Again The Clowning Gets Physical

By ANN HORNADAY;

Published: April 11, 1993

In "Benny and Joon," Johnny Depp spins hubcaps, juggles dinner plates and gets a balloon to sing. Sam, his character, is an illiterate misfit who idolizes Buster Keaton and falls in love with Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), a diagnosed schizophrenic. Sam is, in fact, a quirky amalgam of Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and Jacques Tati; with his wordless acrobatic and eccentric persona, he is also the latest incarnation of the classic clown to emerge from Hollywood.

Last year, Robert Downey Jr., as Chaplin, recreated some of the Little Tramp's early vaudeville and film sketches. The so-called new vaudevillians Bill Irwin and David Shiner are currently appearing in "Fool Moon," a silent clown duet on Broadway. And Tom Courtenay plays a French mime during World War II in the film "The Last Butterfly," due in June.

"I think there will be a resurgence in physical comedy," says Jeremiah Chechik, the director of "Benny and Joon," which opens on Friday. "We've overdosed on the emotional angst of the stand-up comedians and rapid-fire cutting that is meaningless. People are tired of that. They want images to play."

Mr. Shiner, once a clown with Cirque du Soleil, agrees. "Stand-up comedy is on every channel," he says. "We've seen it all."

Audiences weaned on stand-up comics and MTV will no doubt see the balletic comedy rendered in "Benny and Joon" as something new. In fact, Mr. Depp relied heavily on Keaton for his role. During a recent interview, wearing baggy jeans, a slightly rumpled T-shirt and a gimme-cap from a Texas feed company, Mr. Depp resembled a low-slung version of the classic clown, two tattoos just barely visible when he pushed up his sleeves. "In my own small way, I want this to be my salute to Keaton," says Mr. Depp, who also drew on the elements of clowning as the gothic, taciturn title character in the 1990 movie "Edward Scissorhands."

"Keaton was so underrated. In the late 60's, while Chaplin was getting deep respect and lifetime achievement awards, he was doing 'Beach Blanket Bingo.' " Although Keaton was his spiritual inspiration, he says, "there isn't a direct yank" from him, apart from the 180-degree flip he pulls off while trying to disengage a stubborn handkerchief.

In that scene, Mr. Depp performs classic comic moves: he pops his hat off his head, chases it as he unwittingly kicks it away, becomes entangled with Aidan Quinn (who plays Joon's brother, Benny) when he shakes his hand, and winds up with front flips. Mr. Depp could do the flips the first day he tried. The real difficulty came with the most historically specific scene: the Dance of the Dinner Rolls. In his 1925 film "The Gold Rush," Chaplin speared two rolls with forks and, using the forks as legs, danced the rolls like puppets across the table top. The scene has come to exemplify Chaplin's ability, through subtle movement and facial expression, to bring even the most inanimate objects to life.

"You can't outdo him, so you just sort of try to do your own version," Mr. Depp says. "It looks easy but when you start to try to do it you realize how precise everything was."

When he first met Mr. Depp, Dan Kamin, who choreographed the movie's physical comedy sequences, remembers, "I showed him the roll dance using pieces of rye bread and said, 'You have to tell me whether you can stand to work on this for 20 hours, because that's what it will take to get it to look good.' " They spent two weeks rehearsing and continued to practice as the film was shot.

Mr. Kamin also coached Robert Downey Jr. for his recent appearance in "Chaplin" and wrote the movie's two scenes of extended Chaplinesque comedy. "Everything has to be really clearly motivated," Mr. Kamin says. "With physical comedy, there has to be a very rigorous logic."

Mr. Kamin wanted Chaplin's physical grace offstage to be portrayed as accurately as his onstage work. During 10 weeks of coaching Mr. Downey, Mr. Kamin "broke all of his posture and movement down. Robert moves like a modern guy -- sort of slouchy. Chaplin was very 19th century -- very aligned, economical -- but also quite loose. We worked on how to sit, how to lift a spoon, everything."

Although he is often caricatured as waddling, Chaplin glided, with little movement of his torso. "The secret is that when Chaplin walks, the hip goes with the leg when it moves, so his lower body creates that momentum," Mr. Kamin says. Mr. Downey finally got the walk down the night before shooting began.

In "Benny and Joon," film buffs will recognize direct quotes from the classical physical comedians ("I stole from all the greats," says the director cheerfully.) In addition to Chaplin's dinner roll dance and Keaton's "180-degree slam," there is a scene in which Sam propels himself on an ottoman to clean house (reminiscent of Chaplin atop a library ladder in "The Floorwalker"). When Sam swings from a scaffold, he evokes Harold Lloyd on the famous clock; even the singing balloon scene is lifted from a documentary about clowns by Jacques Tati.

In a more subtle technical homage to Chaplin, the director Mr. Chechik "undercranked" the physical comedy scenes. He filmed Mr. Depp's physical sequences at 20 or 22 frames per second, rather than the usual 24. "It isn't obvious, but it adds a kind of precision," he says, "and it contributed to the super-reality."